mount: /mount/path: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

#ubuntu #mount #path #errors

I changed from Windows Desktop to Ubuntu almost a year ago due to blue screen errors that damaged my productivity. Prior Linux environment experience was on deployment servers, cloud containers and WSL. My other 3 partitions on the hard disk are still NTFS after installing the Ubuntu desktop. I document the issues I face and how I overcome them.

Background

Upon upgrading from Ubuntu 23.01 to Ubuntu 23.10, I encountered a strange error when the Ubuntu desktop GUI file explorer Icon was active and I rushed to check my three partitions. The error read "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3, missing codepage or helper program, or other error". You can imagine how terrified I was!

Problem

Research
Listing all the block devices showed two device partitions with no mount path with the following command:

lsblk

navigating to the media folder to check the available directories, the two media paths were missing

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/$ cd media/
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media$ ls
kesa
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media$ cd kesa/
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ ls
XYZ

Solution

Manually mount the device or partition. Create mount paths with the label of the partition that can be found using lsblk -f

In my case:

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mkdir WORKSPACE

mount the device partition using the mount command to the newly created mount path

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media/kesa/WORKSPACE

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/kesa/New\ Volume

change the device name and path in your scenario. Ensure you use the root user when you encounter permission issues. Check final block devices with the list block command.